The Asparagus Plot
by dust on the wind
Summary: Gardening can be quite rewarding... Written for the 2017 Short Story Speedwriting Challenge


_I do not own any of the characters from the series Hogan's Heroes._

 _This story is for the 2017 Short Story Speedwriting Challenge. The prompt line comes from "The Hostage" (Season 3). The cover image is Number 15 from katbybee's screenshot prompt gallery, and is used with her very kind permission._

* * *

"Are you sure you know what you are doing?"

"What's wrong, Schultz?" replied LeBeau, pausing in his work and removing his cap so he could wipe his sweaty brow with his sleeve. "Haven't you ever seen an asparagus bed being dug?"

"I admit, I don't know anything about gardening," said Schultz. "But it doesn't seem right to me. If you plant them so far down, how will the little plants ever grow all the way back up?"

LeBeau leaned on his shovel as he gazed up, risking a severe crick his neck; not just because Schultz was so much the taller, but because the pit LeBeau was standing in was almost a metre deep. "For someone who knows nothing, you sure seem to know a lot. Tell me, Schultzie, was _your_ uncle the most famous market gardener in the whole of Picardy? Did _you_ learn the art of growing asparagus from working for him every spring? Trust me, I know all about it. The secret of success is to keep digging, and when you've finished, dig some more."

He read the signs of dissatisfaction in Schultz's expression, and threw in a hasty _non sequitur_ to send the argument off on a tangent: "Anyway, it was your suggestion to come out here and plant a private asparagus plot."

"It was?"

"Well, who else would have thought of it? Next you'll be trying to tell me it was my idea."

"I thought..." Schultz trailed off, apparently trying to remember where the plan had actually come from. Since the process of racking his memory was likely to take some time, LeBeau returned to his digging.

"You could help, you know," he added. Like that was going to happen.

He was perspiring again, but it wasn't because of his exertions. Surely he must be close now. The dangerous part of this mission was just starting; and the words which had set it in motion had taken on a terrifying new meaning.

 _Let's assume..._

* * *

It had seemed like an innocent enough conversation, at the time, resulting as it did from boredom. The prisoners had nothing to do, and plenty of time to fill in while Colonel Hogan tried to figure out how to get hold of the dynamite they needed for their current mission.

They knew the whereabouts of an Underground cache, they even had a map; but actually getting there was proving a little challenging.

While they waited for inspiration to strike, the men congregated outside the barracks, making the most of the feeble warmth of the early spring sunshine as they chatted idly about this and that. As usual, the discussion quickly turned to food; a subject which, without fail, could be relied on to attract one particular uninvited participant.

"...and a good dollop of mushy peas on the side," Newkirk was saying, just as Schultz came into earshot. "Couldn't ask for anything better."

"Mushy peas – _mais qu'est-ce que c'est_ , mushy peas?" demanded LeBeau in scornful tones.

"You know what your problem is, LeBeau? You don't appreciate good, honest, simple food."

"Oh, is that so? Well, you can keep your English pie and mushy peas. I wouldn't risk spoiling my digestion with them."

"What is going on here?" Schultz pushed forward, just as if he imagined the disputed culinary treat was actually on offer.

"We were just having a kind of debate, Schultz," replied Kinch, who was acting as unofficial moderator. "See, one of the fellers posed a question, and everyone's got their own opinion about it."

Schultz peered at him suspiciously. "What kind of question?"

"Okay. Let's assume you were going to die..."

"See you later."

Newkirk intercepted him before he got far. "No, Schultz, come back. You'll like this, it's all about food."

With a low, dissatisfied rumble, Schultz complied. "All right. Let's assume... _someone_ was going to die. What then?"

"Well," Kinch went on, "if you were going to die, what would you want your last meal to be? I said I'd settle for a good helping of the _bouillabaise_ I had once in New Orleans, and Carter..."

"My mom's pot roast," Carter put in. "It's just great. She puts in carrots, and potatoes, and some other stuff I don't know what it is, and..."

"Oh, it sounds good," crooned Schultz. "As for the bool...bowl... what you said, Kinch, even if I have no idea what it means, it sounds even better."

"And then Newkirk had to spoil it by throwing his pie and mushy peas on the table," growled LeBeau. "It's an insult to the culinary art, that's what it is."

"All right then, Louis. What would you have then?" Newkirk folded his arms, smirking. "Something that takes hours to make, I suppose, and has three hundred ingredients?"

The little Frenchman's eyes narrowed. "You know what? I'd just have asparagus."

"Asparagus?" A chorus of astonishment greeted this apparent anticlimax.

"White asparagus. The first spears of the season, while they're still fresh and tender. And I would steam them, very gently, for no more than three minutes, and serve with butter and lemon, and just a little black pepper."

"Oh, I have not had asparagus since before the war!" sighed Schultz. "It's my very favourite vegetable, I used to have it every day when it was in season, with slices of ham and lots of cheese sauce on top."

"Well, that's just overdoing it," LeBeau put in.

But Schultz went on without seeming to hear him. "Oh, I would give anything for a plate of asparagus!"

"So that would be your choice too, then, Schultzie?" Newkirk gave his mates a wink. "Tell you what, why don't you get some from the black market? Of course, the Gestapo will probably have you shot, but you'll die a happy man."

"Jolly jokers!" Schultz scowled, and stomped off back to his duties.

Nobody gave the matter another thought, apart from Colonel Hogan. He hadn't been part of the conversation, but he'd certainly heard it; and within an hour, he had fashioned it into a plan which he laid out to his men after curfew, gathered around the table in the barracks.

"Okay, we know there's a supply of dynamite which was buried by an Underground agent," he said. "So all we have to do is go dig it up, and bring it back."

"How are we gonna do that, Colonel?" asked Kinch. "That last tunnel collapse is going to take weeks to dig out. We don't have that kind of time."

"We're not going by tunnel," replied Hogan.

He drew a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket and spread it out on the table.

"This is the map the Underground managed to get to us," he said. "It was drawn by one of their agents, Leo Feinspitz."

"Hey, I've heard of him," LeBeau interrupted. "He's a very famous restauranteur. Supposed to be quite good, for a Kraut. He made his name by growing all his own vegetables to serve in his restaurant."

"Well, he won't be growing them any more," said Hogan. "He was arrested a year ago on charges of hoarding food and wine to sell on the black market. Yeah, that joke of yours, Newkirk, turns out to be not so funny as far as Feinspitz is concerned. Anyway, he's long gone, but his dynamite should still be where he left it – in his kitchen garden, near Mondberg, not ten miles from here."

He leaned forward and pointed to the map. "X marks the spot, right next to the garden wall, a few feet from the blackberry bushes. So all we need is an excuse to go to Mondberg and dig it up. And that, LeBeau, is where you come in."

LeBeau blinked. "Me?"

"You. You're going to tell Schultz that he can have his asparagus, if he'll help by sneaking you out of camp and driving you to Mondberg so you can plant it. Tell him you've heard the soil there is particularly good for growing asparagus. And if, while you're digging, you happen to come across something buried, what would be more natural than to bring it back with you?"

"I can think of a few things," growled LeBeau. "But, Colonel, even if I plant them, they won't produce a crop till next year. And anyway, where am I supposed to get asparagus crowns from?"

"Doesn't it grow from bulbs?" said Newkirk.

"No, not bulbs, crowns."

"I'll bet you a pound to a penny Schultz doesn't know that. We can pinch a few flower bulbs from Klink's garden. He'll never notice, and Schultz won't know the difference."

Hogan's eyes narrowed with laughter. "It'll be a nice surprise for him, when they come up."

LeBeau gave a hollow laugh. "Oh, sure. He'll be delighted. He'll probably eat them anyway. I hope they choke him."

"Colonel, there's just one thing," Carter put in diffidently. "You said the stuff's been buried for a year, right?"

"Just over. Why?"

"Well..." Carter gave an uneasy twitch of his shoulders. "Well...no, it'll probably be okay..."

"What, Carter?"

"Well, okay. It's just, after about a year, dynamite starts sweating. I mean, the nitro separates out, and then it gets kind of unstable. You probably don't want to drop it, Louis...or bump it hard...or go over any potholes on the way back to camp..."

"Great. Let's assume I'm going to die," muttered LeBeau. "And I don't even get my asparagus first."

"See, LeBeau?" Newkirk clapped his little mate on the shoulder. "You should have tried the mushy peas."

"If it's all the same," LeBeau snapped back, "I'd rather be blown up."

Hogan straightened up, and looked down at him. "Look, LeBeau. It's a dangerous assignment, so if you decide you want to pass, I won't say a word. But we need that dynamite. So it's up to you."

That was the trouble with Hogan. He had a way of offering an out, while making a man feel incredibly guilty for even considering it.

"All right, I'll do it," said LeBeau. "But do me a favour, all of you. Never, ever mention asparagus to me again."

* * *

So here he was, digging in an abandoned, overgrown kitchen garden, preparing to plant asparagus which was not asparagus, and which would never come to anything, since any moment he was likely to bring his shovel down on a box of buried dynamite and be blown to pieces. No wonder he was sweating.

He scratched the edge of the shovel against the side of what was now a short, but deep, trench. It certainly looked as though the soil might have been disturbed at some time in the past few years, but whether in the cause of inhumation or cultivation, who could say? Only Leo Feinspitz knew for sure, and he wasn't telling.

At any rate, it was taking too long. The daylight was already starting to mellow towards dusk. He needed to get things moving.

"You know what, Schultz?" he called out, "We'd get it done twice as fast if you would pitch in." Or, at least, Schultz might be the one to get blown up.

Schultz waved a fat finger at him. "I wouldn't like to interfere. You are the expert," he said sweetly.

LeBeau scowled. "Next time I make strudel," he muttered under his breath, "I'm going to put castor oil in the apple filling. Then we'll see who's the expert."

With a renewal of irritated vigour, he gave the earth at his feet a rather sharper jab than he had intended; and froze at the hollow metallic clunk which sounded.

 _Let's assume you were going to die_. The words came unbidden into his head.

"Hey, Schultzie," he quavered, as soon as he got his breath back, "I think I hit something."

"What? What is it?" sais Schultz, coming over and bending his knees into a half-squat so he could peer into the excavation.

"I don't know." Hesitantly, LeBeau scraped away the soil around the obstruction.

He must have looked more scared than he intended, since Schultz, with remarkable agility for such a stout man, took a good leap backwards.

"Is it dangerous?" he asked, his voice finding a previously unexplored level of hushed panic.

 _Yes, of course it's dangerous! It's a box of dynamite and it's going to explode any second!_ Of course, LeBeau couldn't say that. He shrugged his shoulders and tried to look unconcerned. "I don't think so. Give me a hand to get it out."

Cautiously, Schultz edged forwards. "Are you sure it's safe?" `

"Well, there's one way to find out," said LeBeau, scraping the earth away from one side of the old metal box. It was bigger than he had expected; big enough to hold quite a lot of unstable dynamite. Definitely too big for LeBeau to extract without help.

Schultz was still holding back. Time for LeBeau to give him an incentive, and he'd already worked out how to do it. "You know what I think, Schultzie? I think we've found someone's buried treasure."

"Treasure?" Schultz bounded back to the trench. "What kind of treasure?"

"Who knows? But whatever it is, Schultzie, it's ours. Finders keepers." LeBeau had picked that expression up from Newkirk, and although he suspected the Englishman's interpretation of it tended to be wider than was commonly accepted in strictly legal terms, the general principle came in handy sometimes.

With previously undemonstrated physical co-ordination, no doubt born of excitement, Schultz scrambled down into the hole. "Let's open it!"

"We could do that." It was the last thing LeBeau wanted to do. "But let's not be hasty. After all, we don't know what's in there."

"Why, what do you think it is? Why not have a look?"

"Well, it's pretty old, Schultz," said LeBeau, regarding the box with a slight frown. "More than a hundred years."

"Really?" Following LeBeau's example, Schultz squinted at their discovery. "It looks just like an ordinary metal tool box. They sell the exact same boxes in the hardware store in town."

"You might think that, Schultz, but that's because you haven't looked. See how the corners are rounded? That's a sure sign of pre-industrial manufacture," LeBeau extemporised. "And what about the symbol painted on the lid?"

"I thought that was just a patch of rust."

"Rust!" LeBeau snorted. "Any Frenchman would recognise what that mark means. I'll bet you anything you like, this box dates back to the time of Napoleon, and belonged to someone in his army."

"As old as that?" Schultz frowned, only half convinced; but that was enough for now. "So that means..."

"That means we'd better take care of it. What if it's holding something that needs conservation? You know – paintings, documents, manuscripts, ivory carvings, bearer bonds. Soldiers in those days collected all kinds of loot on campaign."

"Shameful!"

"Yes, isn't it? But the point is, they did it, and some of it is bound to have got fragile after a hundred years. What if we opened the box, and everything in it fell to pieces? We could lose a fortune."

"So what should we do? Bury it again?"

"And let someone else find it? No, I've got a better idea," said LeBeau. "We'll take it back to camp, and hide it till after the war. I know some people in Paris, expert conservators who can unpack it safely, for a small consideration."

"That's a good idea. Where should we hide it? I could put it under my bed."

For a few seconds, LeBeau was tempted; but he resisted. "No, one of the other guards might find it. I'll hide it in the barracks."

"But Klink makes us search the barracks all the time."

"I know. And have you ever found anything? You can take my word for it, we know how to hide things."

Schultz gave a low whimper. "Please, LeBeau, don't tell me things like that. I know nothing, it's better for everyone that way."

"Okay, Schultzie." LeBeau put the shovel aside. "I think we can get it out now. You take that end – carefully, don't jostle it."

Between them, they managed to extract the box from its surroundings. It was heavier than LeBeau had expected, and the height difference between the two of them made for awkward lifting. Straining to raise the thing to shoulder height, the better to deposit it on the ground above, LeBeau found his patience wearing thin. "Schultz, don't stoop," he snapped. "It's not helping. Together now... _lift...!_ "

With a final heroic effort they got the box up and over the rim of the trench, and LeBeau scrambled out, prepared for the most difficult part of this operation – getting Schultz out of the pit. That took some time.

"Now," said LeBeau, when he'd got his breath back, "we'll put it into the truck and take it back to camp."

Schultz, still winded, just waved one hand in agreement.

The army lorry was parked just outside the garden gate, within sight of the trench. It was an easy matter to carry the box there, although LeBeau, keenly aware of the danger, found himself stepping gingerly over every pebble and leaf on the way. But they reached the truck safely, and slid the box onto the open tailgate. LeBeau breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, let's get back to Stalag 13."

"But you didn't plant the asparagus yet," Schultz protested.

LeBeau gaped at him, flabbergasted. For the last few minutes, the very existence of asparagus had been far from his thoughts. "Who needs it?" he broke out at last. "After the war, we'll be able to have all the asparagus we want."

"After the war is after the war. But right now, we are _in_ the war," said Schultz. "And who knows how long it will last. LeBeau, you promised me the first asparagus of the season. You cannot go back on your word."

LeBeau could do just that, and with little compunction under most circumstances. But Schultz was looking at him with the sad eyes of a disappointed basset hound; and more to the point, the muzzle of Schultz's rifle had shifted ever so slightly in LeBeau's direction. Better to play along. "Okay, Schultz, if you insist. I've dug deep enough now, anyway. All we have to do now is put the plants in and cover them up. It won't take long."

As they walked back to the asparagus bed, he found himself wondering again about the weight of the box. He'd carried dynamite before, and it wasn't that heavy. He turned around to look again at the lorry. In the stress of the moment, he had left the box on the tailgate instead of stowing it securely; and just as he turned, the chain supporting the tailgate gave way.

"Look out, Schultz," LeBeau cried out, pushing the guard into the hole, and diving in after him.

"What – what – LeBeau, what are you doing?" Schultz, who had landed face first in the dirt, clambered to his feet. But LeBeau scarcely heard him. He was staring at the box, lying on its side by the rear wheel, showing no sign of even the smallest explosion within.

He should have been relieved. But his sense of unease was growing fast.

"Quiet, Schultz," he snapped. And somehow, so authoritative did he sound that Schultz fell instantly silent.

LeBeau took a deep breath, and climbed out of the trench. His heart raced, and his limbs resisted with every nerve and muscle as he walked back to the lorry. The box lay there, looking harmless. It didn't seem to be even dented. But as LeBeau got close, he became aware of a smell which hadn't been present before. No, not a smell – a bouquet.

" _Mais...non, c'est impossible_!" he murmured under his breath. He glanced back at Schultz, but the guard was too busy trying to heave himself out of the hole to notice what LeBeau was up to.

As quickly as his shaking fingers could manage, he forced open the rusty clasps, and lifted the lid. Underneath was a layer of oilcloth; and below that, protected by old blankets, he found what his nose had already told him was there: a dozen bottles, labels faded and dusty with age. Only one had broken in the fall; and he cursed under his breath. "The 1899 Bordeaux. Of course it would be that one."

This wasn't Leo Feinspitz's dynamite cache. This was one of his hoards of black market wine.

LeBeau had to fight to suppress the curses rising to his lips, lest Schultz should hear him. So the map the Underground had provided was wrong. Or was it? He closed his eyes, trying to picture the drawing he'd seen so briefly. X marked the spot – right next to the garden wall, a few feet from the blackberries. But the blackberry canes had grown a lot since they'd been left to themselves. They might not have extended as far when Feinspitz drew his map.

The conclusion was inescapable. He'd been digging in the wrong place. The dynamite was a good few metres further back; and they needed that dynamite.

He closed the box hastily, as Schultz came puffing up like an unregulated steam engine. "It's okay, Schultz," he lied. "No damage at all. Give me a hand, we'll put it safe in the truck. And then we'd better get on with it. We've still got a lot of digging to do."

"I thought you said you'd dug enough," said Schultz.

"I know. But remember the secret to success – when you've finished digging, dig some more," replied LeBeau.

His thoughts turned to all those bottles of wine, and he smiled. There might even be some more of Feinspitz's black-market treasure buried somewhere nearby.

"And you know what, Schultz?" he said cheerfully. "If you don't mind a few surprises, gardening can be very rewarding."


End file.
